Epicureanism and Regret in Modern Culture

Americans have epicurean tendencies, according to Steven L. Jones of the Bird and Babe blog. Epicureanism was first espoused by 4th century Greek philosophy Epicurus, and posits “pleasure” as the supreme good of life. In Jones’ mind, Americans are epicurean in three key ways:

Aponia, the epicurean doctrine of avoiding bodily pain or exertion, explains the American fascination with efficiency and technology … Ataraxia, the epicurean doctrine of avoiding mental anguish (literally not getting yourself worked up), explains the perpetual criticism of Americans being apathetic, anti-intellectual or uninvolved in our political life … Agnosticism explains the general lack of concern of Americans for deep thinking about religion.

Peter Lawler has some corresponding thoughts at Big Think Tuesday, suggesting “people are less and less obsessed with the past, maybe especially (but not only) in America. We have no historical sense, a sense which could give us a sense of place, purpose, and limits, as well as the chastening that comes with reflection on experience.” A Thursday piece by Carina Chocano in Aeon Magazine complemented Lawler’s observations and tied them into Jones’ definition of Ataraxia. Her piece, “Je Regrette,” explored society’s reluctance to express regret:

Life is not mysterious, it’s mathematics. All we have to do is track our productivity, our spending, our steps, our calorie intake. All we have to do is count our friends and likes and follows. The illusion of control that these tools grant us over every aspect of our lives is powerful. There is always something we can do today to avoid regret tomorrow. To admit regret is to admit to a previous failure of self-control. ‘In the reigning economic models of decision, human beings are “calculating machines” who decide their preferences based on calculations of utilities and probabilities,’ Landman writes. ‘We deny regret in part to deny that we are now or have ever been losers.’ In a culture that believes winning is everything, that sees success as a totalising, absolute system, happiness and even basic worth are determined by winning. It’s not surprising, then, that people feel they need to deny regret — deny failure — in order to stay in the game.”

According to these authors, modern culture is largely obsessed with pleasure. Thus we must avoid pleasure’s evil twin, pain, in all its physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual manifestations. This involves a purposeful forgetfulness, as well as a present fixation on positive sensations that undergird feelings of control.

Chocano thoughtfully points out that “The point of regret is not to try to change the past, but to shed light on the present. This is traditionally the realm of the humanities. What novels tell us is that regret is instructive. And the first thing regret tells us (much like its physical counterpart — pain) is that something in the present is wrong.” Ergo, regret rests a blazing hot finger on areas of regress or foulness in our history. It alerts us to pain, and often to sin. No wonder such feeling is antithetical to Epicureanism.

Having just finished The Scarlet Letterby Nathaniel Hawthorne, this idea of regret stood out to me. The book’s protagonist, Hester Prynne, is caught in adultery and forced to wear a scarlet “A” (for “adulteress”) as a public, permanent chastisement for her sin. As the years unfold, regret molds her thoughts and actions: she grows humble, penitent, and servant-hearted. The Puritans begin to soften toward her. Hawthorne writes that “not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed” the scarlet letter upon her any longer. Yet she continues to wear it. Why?

Hester, it seems, did not want to forget. Her life had been shaped and marked by this letter. Though it would undoubtedly have brought more pleasure to cast it away (as she does so temporarily in a moment of passion), she continued to wear it. Perhaps she recognized the good wrought through evil signified in that letter. Perhaps she understood she was wiser and stronger for that letter.

Historical characters have a different perspective on the past than our modern populace. Their everyday activities: sewing, weaving, cooking, cleaning, farming, etc., all emphasized the permanence and inter-connectedness of things. Garden vegetables found their way into evening dinners and canning jars. Wool became yarn, cloth, quilts and socks. Nearby trees became fences and firewood. Life functioned as a tapestry: stretching from its origins into the future, never wasted, never fully forgotten. Even the simplest error became opportunity to regrow, reuse, or remake something.

In our modern era, however, much of life can be easily discarded. Unwanted items or mistakes are easily trashed and forgotten. We buy most items from the grocery store, with little thought of their origin. Few of us make our own furniture, clothing, or home goods. This extends, perhaps most potently, into our new virtual lives: consider the “delete” button’s effect on our intellectual, philosophical consideration. The very idea that something can be purely “deleted”—never to appear again—is rather revolutionary. We can shred, crush, and pummel physical matter, but we can never fully destroy it. Van Gogh’s paintings-beneath-paintings offer an interesting depiction of how little people in times past could truly “erase” or “make over” past experiences.

One must also consider the “refresh” button. In one mere second, you can “delete” an entire experience. The “refresh” key takes a mere instant to make everything new. With instantaneous precision, we can update every moment, giving it new life. Delete and refresh are perhaps most dangerous in conjunction: if we use them consecutively, we can wipe out full passages of personal past in a heartbeat. Perhaps you posted an embarrassing status on Facebook? No matter. Delete it, and refresh your profile. No one need ever know. That heedless word, typed in an excess of emotion, is gone.

Of course, physical existence remains true to its material nature: we can’t just delete and refresh real life. The fabric of time and earth are crafted against us. But the intoxicating nature of this virtual existence, so easily customized, forgotten, and controlled, persuades us to attempt “delete + refresh” in physical reality. This is, perhaps, Epicureanism at its most potent. In our search for pleasure, regret weighs us down. It prevents us from reaching our greatest potential good. Therefore, we forget or reject the painful. We delete and refresh constantly, saving up only the most positive and pleasure-filled remembrances. We cast away our scarlet letters.

Do we lose something in the deleting? Chocano says yes: “The denial of regret … will not block the fall of the dominoes. It will just allow you to close your eyes and clap your hands over your ears as they fall, down to the very last one.” Life viewed as a series of manipulable, forgettable moments seems enticing. It seems freeing. But what if Hester had forgotten her adultery, or Raskolnikov his murderous history? What if Scrooge never visited his haunted, selfish past?

Hester’s stained past molded a brave future. Raskolnikov’s pain and penitence wrought redemption. Scrooge’s regret brought forth a new birth. Through their stories, we see a past and present connected, creating a tapestry of binding and redeeming moments.

True Epicureanism is not the enemy, and distortions of Epicureanism are wicked devices of closed religious minds. Epicurus was a spiritual freedom fighter whose thinking played a crucial role in the founding of this country upon “the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Epicurus taught the importance of wise “choice and avoidance”. This is impossible to do well without reflecting on past actions and how they had caused one pain, or had caused pain for someone one cared about. However, Epicurus would reject the value of regret that had outlived its usefulness in creating wisdom and thus pleasure. Just as one is obliged to forgive others, one must be allowed to forgive oneself.

Of course, Hester Prynne, Raskolnikov, and Scrooge have another attribute in common besides high-minded regret … they’re all fictional.

Ms. Olmstead does not offer any empirical evidence for her rather romantic notions. Why on earth should we believe that that “[h]istorical characters have a different perspective on the past than our modern populace”? And specifically, that “weaving, cooking, cleaning, farming, etc., all emphasized the permanence and inter-connectedness of things”?

I keep seeing this with current American discourse. The brighter sparks criticize American superficiality, but then advocate for a return to the past and greater religiosity. You can’t return to the past and smacking down internet technology — perhaps the one great invention to come out of America — shows a lack of real regard for value and perspective.

Actually, if you think about the nature of the internet, the truth is the opposite of what this article is saying. Once something becomes widespread on the internet, it is virtually impossible to “delete” it. So that improper picture you took of yourself when you were 21 can come back to haunt you decades later. In my view, that’s worse than any scarlet letter.

I appreciated having to think about the articles import. And maybe I missed it somewhere but the contention here is vital if subtle —

Regret is a sign that a person has a conscience. And that is turning point in all human morality. That something has transpired that demands my reassessment and even acknowledgment that perhaps that word spoken, that comment that behavioral choice was not what it could have been or yielded the best result.

Now for choices in the material world should I have taken that job instead of that one — testing against the unknown is one thing. But testing against what one has actually done against what they themselves know was less appealing in morality — that is where regret has import. As for many of the comments above about fictional characters —

While these characters are indeed fictional, I would not believe any of you if you told there was no time when you have not regretted a comment made to your wife (female) or husband (male), child or friends and had expressed as much.

But then I read this,

” It prevents us from reaching our greatest potential good. Therefore, we forget or reject the painful. We delete and refresh constantly, saving up only the most positive and pleasure-filled remembrances.”

There are so many aspects of regret that the grand narrative of regret o avoid pain misses a very important human relational dynamic — regretting for the sake of someone else. The consequence for someone else. Not one’s hurt but that if someone else.

As for postings I have made some comments I should have phrased differently. one would hope that among the adult community that upon reading any one of my poorly written and regrettable comments one would write a request for clarification or of my intent. But those deletes would not be about me — but about someone else.

I think those opening descriptors are too broad a brush to paint the US population with — but I will save that for another response regrettable poorly written response.

Opposing homosexual marriage and never having experimneted with the same

opposing global warming now climate change

Teaching all of the above

Not being known as a liar

Striving for integrity in all things

Opposing any form of immigration reform

Believing in Christ

Leaning on scripture

Voting Republican/conservatively

As for the past, one cannot undue an event, but certainly one can correct error. One cannot undo an event, but one can certainly redress grievance. About self — I may regret tone, or content — but I have rarely regretted a moral compass which puts me at odds with everything liberal.

Why not consider what Thomas Jefferson had to say about this subject, and not just hold to the standard academic line?

Thomas Jefferson to William Short, October 31, 1819

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us. Epictetus indeed, has given us what was good of the stoics; all beyond, of their dogmas, being hypocrisy and grimace. Their great crime was in their calumnies of Epicurus and misrepresentations of his doctrines; in which we lament to see the candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice. Diffuse, vapid, rhetorical, but enchanting. His prototype Plato, eloquent as himself, dealing out mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind, has been deified by certain sects usurping the name of Christians; because, in his foggy conceptions, they found a basis of impenetrable darkness whereon to rear fabrications as delirious, of their own invention. These they fathered blasphemously on him who they claimed as their founder, but who would disclaim them with the indignation which their caricatures of his religion so justly excite. Of Socrates we have nothing genuine but in the Memorabilia of Xenophon; for Plato makes him one of his Collocutors merely to cover his own whimsies under the mantle of his name; a liberty of which we are told Socrates himself complained. Seneca is indeed a fine moralist, disguising his work at times with some Stoicisms, and affecting too much of antithesis and point, yet giving us on the whole a great deal of sound and practical morality.

Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, July 5, 1814:

I am just returned from one of my long absences, having been at my other home for five weeks past. Having more leisure there than here for reading, I amused myself with reading seriously Plato’s Republic. I am wrong, however, in calling it amusement, for it was the heaviest task-work I ever went through. I had occasionally before taken up some of his other works, but scarcely ever had patience to go through a whole dialogue. While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been, that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this? How the soi-disant Christian world, indeed, should have done it, is a piece of historical curiosity. But how could the Roman good sense do it? And particularly, how could Cicero bestow such eulogies on Plato! Although Cicero did not wield the dense logic of Demosthenes, yet he was able, learned, laborious, practised in the business of the world, and honest. He could not be the dupe of mere style, of which he was himself the first master in the world. With the moderns, I think, it is rather a matter of fashion and authority. Education is chiefly in the hands of persons who, from their profession, have an interest in the reputation and the dreams of Plato. They give the tone while at school, and few in their after years have occasion to revise their college opinions. But fashion and authority apart, and bringing Plato to the test of reason, take from him his sophisms, futilities and incomprehensibilities, and what remains? In truth, he is one of the race of genuine sophists, who has escaped the oblivion of his brethren, first, by the elegance of his diction, but chiefly, by the adoption and incorporation of his whimsies into the body of artificial Christianity. His foggy mind is forever presenting the semblances of objects which, half seen through a mist, can be defined neither in form nor dimensions. Yet this, which should have consigned him to early oblivion, really procured him immortality of fame and reverence.

The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them; and for this obvious reason, that nonsense can never be explained. Their purposes, however, are answered. Plato is canonized; and it is now deemed as impious to question his merits as those of an Apostle of Jesus. He is peculiarly appealed to as an advocate of the immortality of the soul; and yet I will venture to say, that were there no better arguments than his in proof of it, not a man in the world would believe it. It is fortunate for us, that Platonic republicanism has not obtained the same favor as Platonic Christianity; or we should now have been all living, men, women and children, pell mell together, like beasts of the field or forest. Yet “Plato is a great philosopher,” said La Fontaine. But, says Fontenelle, “Do you find his ideas very clear?” “Oh no! he is of an obscurity impenetrable.” “Do you not find him full of contradictions?” “Certainly,” replied La Fontaine, “he is but a sophist.” Yet immediately after he exclaims again, “Oh, Plato was a great philosopher.” Socrates had reason, indeed, to complain of the misrepresentations of Plato; for in truth, his dialogues are libels on Socrates.